Golf

McIlroy scuffles, Van Pelt soars at Barclays

So it’s looking like a good old shootout is brewing in New Jersey, readying to kick off the FedEx Cup playoffs with some fireworks.

After the first round of The Barclays on Thursday at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, the overwhelming theme was the golf course was fair, demanding — and ripe for the picking.

Breaking out of a logjam atop the leaderboard was Bo Van Pelt, who chipped in for eagle on the 17th hole and finished up with a six-under 65, holding a one-shot lead over an eight-man group who all made the feat of shooting 66 look commonplace.

“There are 122 really good players here, and bunch of guys I feel that are playing well at the end of the year,” said Van Pelt, who would jump from 104 in the FedEx Cup standings — outside of the cut for the second leg of the playoffs — all the way to No. 1 should the leaderboard stay the same come Sunday night. “So whoever ends up winning is going to have to play pretty well.”

Van Pelt said he went fishing in the East River — yup, that East River — on Tuesday, and even though he didn’t eat any of the fish he caught, he thought the sojourn might have been a good-luck charm. Yet, he wasn’t exactly willing to look ahead and predict a final score he might need to shoot to win.

“I’ve always said a good course setup, a good tournament, a guy shoots 12-under, he should win,” Van Pelt said. “But I’m not good at picking scores.”

The rough was seemingly the only defense on Thursday for this 1929 A.W. Tillinghast design, and it did manage to get the better of two of the best players in the world.

Rory McIlroy came in having won three consecutive tournaments, and two consecutive majors, yet sprayed the ball off the tee all morning and shot a 3-over 74. Phil Mickelson joined him in disappointing the boisterous New York-area fans, scrapping it around for an even-par 71.

With rain coming Wednesday night, the fairways kept drives out of the tall and dense rough, and the greens were welcoming in receiving approach shots. With a 70 percent chance of rain on Friday, it doesn’t seem like the soft conditions are going to change, either.

The putting surfaces were also seemingly flawless, allowing well-struck putts to find the bottom of the hole more often than not.

“The greens are rolling really, really well, to where you can make a lot of putts if you get them on line and have the right speed,” said Hunter Mahan, one of eight tied for second. “I was able to do that and kind of make it easy on myself. Because the rough is pretty penalizing and it’s pretty thick in a lot of areas.”

Mahan was the first to post 66, and he was followed later by — take a deep breath — Cameron Tringale, Charles Howell III, Brendon de Jonge, Ben Martin, Brendon Todd, Jim Furyk, and Paul Casey.

All said, there were 55 players who shot under par, and are therefore within in five shots of the lead.

“It played about as gettable as you could get it,” Howell said, with the conditions a veritable cure for a guy who came in having missed his previous two cuts. “I think the rough is pretty penal, though, if you do miss the fairways.”

Mickelson, the five-time major champion who fell one shot short of McIlroy at the PGA Championship at Valhalla in Kentucky two weeks ago, said the rough at Ridgewood is actually more difficult than it was at the major championship.

“It was much thicker, heavier, and the grain was kind of going from the green to the tee,” Mickelson said. “The ball just kind of buried.”

Yet Mickelson couldn’t be more effusive in his praise of the overall condition of the golf course.
“I can’t get over what great shape the greens are in,” he said. “They are just spectacular.”

And if that doesn’t change, these playoffs are going to open with a bang.